What Happened To Fmovies?

FMovies, one of the biggest internet repositories for pirated entertainment content, has been taken down by authorities. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) worked with Hanoi police to end the operations of FMovies and its affiliated sites, which have been operating in Vietnam since 2016. In addition to FMovies, the authorities have also clamped down on "bflixz," "flixtorz," "movies7," "myflixer," and "aniwave." These sites collectively drew over 6.7 billion visits in just over a year, averaging about 374 million visits per month. For comparison, by the end of 2024's second quarter, one of the must-have streaming services, Netflix, had over 277 million subscribers.

In addition to a network of sites, which ACE notes was "the largest piracy ring in the world," the local police also shunted the operations of a video hosting service named Vidsrc, which was supposedly run by the same bad actors and served hundreds of other piracy outposts on the worldwide web. TorrentFreak reported that Fmovies became inaccessible earlier this year in July.

"We took down the mothership here," Charles Rivkin, chief of ACE, told Variety. ACE, which counts executives from Apple, Netflix, Sony, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. as members of its governing board, worked with the Ministry of Public Security and the Hanoi Municipal Police to bust the services of FMovies. Following a lawsuit, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered FMovies to pay $218,200 in damages to media conglomerate ABS-CBN back in 2017. But the piracy site continued operating, as usual.

For over half a decade, Fmovies was on the Notorious Markets List maintained by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), highlighting its status as an online market that propagates "substantial trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy." According to the 2023 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy report compiled by USTR, Fmovies commanded over 60 associated domains. It was so popular that it attracted over 9.2 million unique visitors in August last.

Reports of FMovies going offline started popping up on popular social media apps and forums like Reddit a few weeks ago. Users started posting about potential shutdowns or server issues affecting multiple piracy websites a day ago on social media. As of press time, the Fbox website flashed a message bidding goodbye to its visitors. "Please pay for the movies/shows, that's what we should do to show our respect to people behind movies/shows," it adds.

ACE, on the other hand, notes that the operation was a victory for the creative community involved in making and developing content at all levels. With piracy networks closing their doors, production studios stand to draw the benefit from a fresh influx of traffic. According to a research paper, when pirated file-sharing site Megaupload was taken down, revenues for three major studios climbed by up to 8.5% in sales and rentals, highlighting the sheer impact of piracy and illicit sharing of copyright-protected entertainment media. While many might be sad to see Fmovies go, there are other legal and free streaming services to watch content.